Closing old support threads

[socialdude]

Hi @jdembowski,

Thank you for the information not to post a link to our site in old support threads when answering there.

I have a follow up question: I am now going through old support threads as I heard it’s encouraged by WordPress to also close old threads. Sometimes users requested features which are covered in our premium plugin now. I could just mark the thread as resolved but it may raise the question why I marked it as resolved. Would it be ok to mention the premium plugin, just not as link?

And: is a link still fine in new support threads?

[Jan Dembowski]

Slight terminology note: you can’t close topics but you can resolve them. Moderators can and do close them for a variety of reasons.

https://make.www.ads-software.com/support/handbook/forum-welcome/#closing-posts

Sometimes that’s done simply to avoid pinging the original poster with emails when someone finds their 9-12 month old topic. The topics I closed were for that reason and will remain closed.

I have a follow up question: I am now going through old support threads as I heard it’s encouraged by WordPress to also close old threads.

Going through old topics and reviving them isn’t always the best thing.

A topic can be resolved by plugin and theme authors with or without a note. Some author resolve topics with “I’ve not heard back from you, if this is still an issue please create a new topic.” and then resolve the topic.

People can still reply to those but that’s not as useful as creating a current topic. 10 months later the versions of WordPress have changed and so do the plugins and themes.

And: is a link still fine in new support threads?

Yes, my reply is going to be subjective.

If you mean a link to the “premium” version then not really.

These forums are not ever for promoting sales and people who do that are asked politely to stop. These are community forums for supporting code available on this site for download.

Plugin and theme authors are permitted to upsell but the focus has to remain the free code here. If you are resurrecting old topics with “this is now possible in the premium plugin” then I’m pretty sure you can see how that would be frowned upon. ??

Authors should reply to current topics with “that’s a feature available with the premium version” and leave it like that. A link to the author’s site is fine (don’t use URL shortners, I personally dislike those) is acceptable.

But going back to months old topics isn’t support really. It’s (and I’m not implying ill will here!) marketing.

Do you see the difference between the two? Replying to a current topic like that is fine. Retroactively going back and doing that begins to become promotion and that’s not for these forums.

*Re-reads*

I think I’m being clear but let me know. This isn’t “the rules say X,Y and Z” (my biggest gripe with some AD&D players in the past [and yeah, when I DM’ed games that didn’t work]) this is a subjective thing. But if you are going back to old topics with a link to a “premium” plugin then that’s not good.

If you are resurrecting old topics with “the current version” then that may not be good either. People can and do create new topic or even ping authors in their old ones when it’s still the same problem.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Jan Dembowski.
• This reply was modified 7 years, 5 months ago by Jan Dembowski.